Till 10 April a total of 923,242 doses of the Covishield jabs have been administered in the country

Sri Lanka will begin administering the second jab of the Covishield vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India on Monday, said a Ceylon Today report.

Nearly 355,000 jabs from the Oxford AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine remain to be administered in the island country,Chief of Epidemiology Unit Dr. Sudath Samaraweera was quoted as saying.

Dr. Samaraweera said till 10 April a total of 923,242 doses of the Covishield jab were administered in the country, it reported.

Three consignments of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine manufactured in India, totaling over 1.2 million doses, arrived in Sri Lanka in January, February and March this year - the last one through the COVAX facility, a statement of the High Commission of India in Sri Lanka had said on April 10.

The first of these consignments enabled the launch of COVID vaccination programme in Sri Lanka ahead of the earlier plan, it added.

“India’s vaccine manufacturing capacity – already the largest in the world – is being enhanced to meet the emergency global demand of duly approved COVID-19 vaccines. Their ongoing supply is calibrated in view of several factors, which include production and domestic requirement,” the High Commission had noted.

“India will continue to be in the forefront of the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and will also continue its valuable cooperation with relevant stakeholders," it further elaborated.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is considering restrictions on overseas arrivals to limit the spread of coronavirus as some 15% of the positive cases reported this month have been overseas arrivals.

The island nation has reported over 96,000 cases since the onset of the pandemic in March last year, with over 92,000 of them having recovered. The number of deaths stands at 615.